The invention relates to a method for processing image data to be displayed on a display device, for example an LCD panel for mobile applications.
The invention further relates to a display driver incorporating circuitry for processing color image data according to such a method.
It is well known in the art to drive a display device with image data, which is generated for example by a video processor and supplied to the display device for displaying an image thereon. The image data are supplied in frames which are subsequently shown on the display. Each frame constitutes a complete image.
The frames of the image data may be processed in order to appeal as much as possible to a viewer watching the image. For example, increasing the brightness of the image data for this purpose has been known since the earliest television systems, where adapting the brightness of the image data is usually implemented as a manual control.
While increasing the brightness does contribute to obtaining a more pleasing image, the effect of it is limited as a too large brightness increase may lead to loss of local detail. That is, details in areas of the image having an initial brightness value that is already high are lost, as increasing the brightness results in all pixels within such areas clipping to the maximum luminance value of the display.